


Clouds are what you make of them

by charimiel



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cameras, Derek POV, M/M, Post 3a, and clouds, completely ignores 3b, feat derek's sucky life, i am incapable of writing derek without angst sorry, kinda derek hale character study, not really - Freeform, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 15:30:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1610123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charimiel/pseuds/charimiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little like life really.</p>
<p>Where Derek cloud watches, and healing is a slow process both times around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clouds are what you make of them

When Derek was younger, he used to sit outside with his dad and watch the clouds on warm days. They’d lie on the grass by the house, side by side, and tell each other what they saw. Birds, people, symbols, buildings. It was something they did together, because his dad was human, and he spent so much time with his mom for all the wolf stuff. His sisters called him weird for it, but he loved cloud watching with his dad.

There were no clouds in the sky the day of the fire.

The day he and Laura left town, with only the clothes they were wearing and Laura’s car, it was bright and warm, with the clumps and wisps of clouds that his dad would have joked about with him. He glanced out of the window as they drove away from the town that had become a graveyard for them, and saw the clouds with a feeling like emptiness. Laura didn’t comment when he looked away, closed his eyes. He didn’t sleep, because how could he sleep after everything.

He only drove at night after that when he and Laura took turns at the wheel, sneaking naps and pointedly not commenting on the tears they both woke up to on their cheeks.

…..

They’ve been living in New York for 4 years when he glances up, and past the skyline and haze of city smog, sees a cloud shaped like a wolf. He holds his breath, waiting for the pain to hit, but instead he just feels the sadness of memory and not the crushing agony of loss. He pulls out his phone, snaps a crappy quality picture, and heads home, a little lighter on his feet.

When he shows Laura, she laughs and says they still look like blobs to her. But she hugs him tight, holds him in a way that shows him how proud she is of him.

….

He buys a camera the next day, heads to a park where he can sit and not be in the way, and lays down on the grass with it. As he takes pictures of the sky, he imagines his dad next to him, and it’s painful, but it feels like healing. Derek’s life has been divided into Before and After for so long that it’s like his timeline is split into two completely different people, but lying on the ground, taking pictures of clouds, creates a kind of bridge between the two hims.

He goes there often, they don’t need to work, they’ll probably never need to work again. It hurts to think about why, but knows they’d have wanted him and Laura to be happy.

He snaps pictures of every cloud he sees something in, and even starts taking pictures of other things. Trees, birds, the skyline at night. He snaps a picture of the blobbiest cloud he sees, and shows Laura, says ‘look Laur, It’s you’. She tackles him to the ground, and they both can’t stop laughing as they play fight, the camera forgotten.

….

Laura suggests looking into displaying the photos one day about a year after he’d bought the camera. He’s getting good, she says, and someone ought to do something with all these photos. He owns more cameras than pants at this point, has every filter imaginable, knows so much about photography after drowning in it for a year. He has to think about it for almost a week, the idea of putting little pieces of himself on display like that. Because that’s what the photos are, little pieces of him, the way he sees the world.

In the end, he agrees, because Laura is right. She knows him better than anyone, and maybe it’s what he needs.

To his relief, he doesn’t have to do anything besides sending some photos to the local gallery, responding to their occasional emails. He doesn’t sell the photos, donates them, because how can you put worth on pieces of your soul? He knows they’re on display, knows he has a separate room of his photos, because Laura tells him. But he asks the gallery to keep them as by anonymous, and he doesn’t visit them until months after they’re put up.

It’s breath-taking, such an indescribable feeling, to walk into a room and see something you created on display. He has a camera around his neck, he always does, and some random guy walks to stand next to him, speaks to him like he’s a new artist looking for inspiration, tells him he’s come to the right place because this guy is amazing.

He sends in more photos after that, because it’s a heady feeling, knowing people like things you create.

….

It’s been 6 years, and Laura says goodbye to him. She’s heading back to Beacon Hills, to check up on their uncle, sort out some land squabble. He snaps a photo of them both before she leaves, a reflection in the mirror by the door, Derek in loose sweats and a loose t-shirt, Laura dressed up the way she always is when she leaves the house, both of them grinning, and he prints a copy of the photo when she’s driven away, puts it up on the mantelpiece, and feels whole again.

So of course, four days later, everything falls apart.

He’s out in the park when he feels it. Laura and him had left most of the werewolf stuff behind them. They curled up together on full moons, anchored each other, but beyond that they lived as completely normal humans. Laura was his alpha, but before that she was his sister, and she’d told his as much. But he still feels it, the loss of the bond. The emptiness in his chest. He wishes he could deny it to himself, but he knows she’s gone, she’s not coming back. It’s early morning, still technically night, and there’s no one around to see him as he breaks down, throws up behind a bush, because no no no this can’t be happening again.

He ends up back at the apartment, and it’s like he’s drowning in the scent of her, and he won’t believe it but he knows it’s real, this is real. He calls her phone, but gets no reply, he never will again.

He lies curled on the floor for what feels like days, and in reality is maybe a couple of hours. When the sun rises outside, he feels angry again, furious at the world, and at himself, and at Laura. He grabs the nearest object- one of his cameras as it turns out- and throws it at the mirror by the door which he’s curled up next to, the same mirror he’d taken a picture of them in only days before. The shards go everywhere, and he must end up cut by some of them, because there’s blood on the shards on the floor, but he’s already healed.

After another immeasurable amount of time, he takes a breath. And another. Heads to the main room. Flips open his laptop, books a plane ticket because Laura took their car with her. He walks calmly into his room, detached and empty, and looks at himself in the mirror. Changes out of the loose sweats into his only pair of jeans, pulls on the simplest darkest Henley he owns, grabs the leather jacket he’d bought weeks after arriving in New York, needing armour against the world. When he pulls it on, it feels like a defence against everything around him, just like it had when he’d bought it.

He leaves for the airport, takes nothing except his keys, his wallet, and the photo he’d never gotten a chance to show Laura. He doesn’t take any of his cameras.

He doesn’t look back as the taxi he hails down drives away from their building.

…

Cora finds the photograph tucked in his wallet, about a year later, and traces her fingers over Laura’s face, over their carefree smiles. Derek stops breathing- he has Cora now, even though she’ll never be Laura, but it still hurts.

She puts the photo up on the wall in the loft, sticks it up with blutack, after the fight against Deucalion and Jennifer in the week or so before they decide to leave. Stiles comes over one day, spots it, and wanders over to look more closely at the picture.

“You were happy.” He says, and there’s sadness in his voice.

“For a while.” Derek answers, and puts a hand on Stiles’s shoulder, because he needs this more nowadays, the darkness inside him ever present.

“You deserve to be again.”

….

He takes Cora to New York, to their apartment. It’s exactly how he left it, dust has collected on the mirror shards in the doorway, and he avoids looking at them. She stops at his camera collection, looks from them to some of the photos Laura had stuck on the walls, her favourites.

“You took these?”

Derek nods, and takes the camera when Cora hands it to him, perplexed.

“You should start again.” She says firmly, and he turns the camera over in his hands and considers it.

He takes her to the gallery, where his photos are surprisingly still on display.

When he goes back to Beacon Hills, because he’s linked to the place now, has put down roots he can’t abandon, she stays behind in New York with the promise of keeping up contact. She can’t go back, and he can’t stay away, but they can still be siblings.

He takes his cameras with him this time, and his New York clothes.

…

When he gets back, the first place he goes is the remains of his house. He lies on the grass by the remains, where he used to lie with his dad, and snaps pictures of the Californian sky. When he leaves, he feels lighter, and he heads back to the new apartment he’s bought.

He displays his photos on the walls, and Stiles barges in one day carrying 2 boxes of pizza and a movie and sees them. He puts the boxes down, and walks up to the pictures, gazes at them, looks over at Derek, and then smiles a little heart-breaking smile.

“D’you think you can be happy again?” Stiles asks later, after they’ve eaten the pizza together, watched the movie on Derek’s laptop.

Derek looks at him, at the sad but hopeful eyes, and his mouth curls up just a little. “I think I’m getting there.”

…

Stiles comes over a lot after that. When Derek asks about the darkness, how he’s managing, if there’s anything he can do, Stiles waves his hand at him. Tells him he’s fine, that this is perfect, this is what helps, being close to someone.

Derek takes Stiles with him when he goes out to the woods to take pictures, takes him to a clearing he used to visit with his mom when he begged her to take him exploring. They lie there, and Stiles doesn’t stop talking, just like always, and it’s perfect. Derek snaps a picture of Stiles as he lays in the grass next to him, carefree, his eyes wide in surprise from Derek turning the camera on him. When he looks at the photo later, there’s a warmth that settles into his bones, and suddenly something clicks into place inside of him.

He puts the picture up on the wall, next to the new print out of the photo of him and Laura he’d made so both he and Cora could have one, next to the photo of him and Cora he’d taken when they’d said goodbye in New York.

It feels like family.

…

He takes more pictures of Stiles after that, takes pictures of all the pack. He has a wall dedicated to pictures of the people he knows, laughing, doing dumb things, pouting at the camera deliberately. He knows Stiles is on there more than anyone else, but no one comments on it.

…

Derek kisses Stiles for the first time on a cloudy day. He takes a picture of the look on his face when he pulls away, because it’s wide-eyed shock and it’s beautiful. He laughs, and Stiles glares at him before leaning in to kiss him back, and  Derek forgets the camera in favour of just kissing Stiles, because he’s wanted this for months now, and it’s more than he ever imagined.

When they break apart, Derek takes a picture of the two of them together, and when they get back to Derek’s apartment it goes in the middle of the mural, and they stare at it for a few moments before Stiles pounces at him, and Derek catches him, laughing and carefree like he hasn’t been since Laura.

**Author's Note:**

> So this was born from the combination of lack of sleep, my brain remembering a prompt from about 6 months ago, and a sudden thought of 'what if Derek actually healed in New York but then the world just fucks him over again.'  
> This was also written at some ungodly hour so who even knows if it made sense.  
> [Come say hey, I need people to sob with about character development and my poor babies](http://charimiel.tumblr.com)


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